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Monday, August 11, 2014

The House of Closed Doors Giveaway

It’s here at last . . . and it’s been a long time coming. It’s taken me way longer than I intended to get a print edition of The House of Closed Doors up and running, but the buy links are finally populating their way through the internet. The paperback is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble so far on the US market, on Amazon UK and Waterstones in the UK, and on Fishpond in Australia, with faster delivery, apparently, than in the UK. I’m watching this slow propogation with a certain fascination—I used Ingram as my printer/distributor and they promise 29,000 distribution channels, but I have no idea what they are! And I think the time of delivery is determined by whether Ingram has a local POD (print on demand) facility. Some of those 29,000 outlets should, logically, include your local bookstore, into which you can theoretically march and request that a copy be ordered.

You’ve probably gathered that this whole process is not under my control. Indeed, I’m still wondering what payment from Ingram is going to look like (their service geared specifically to self-publishers, IngramSpark, is fairly new and I haven’t seen examples anywhere on the internet, PLUS it apparently takes 90 days to work your way into their lists so I won’t be seeing any money for a while). I’m planning to do a big post on getting paid, comparing and contrasting different media, once I get my first IS statement and can produce images for you.

Be that as it may, I now have two cartons of books in my office, 25 of which are reserved for Goodreads and LibraryThing giveaways starting September 1 (I’m a little less confident about the LT giveaway actually happening for reasons I won’t bore you with, but am pretty sure about Goodreads).

And in the meanwhile . . . .

Drumroll . . . .

Here is The House of Closed Doors Super Giveaway, consisting of:

A paperback copy of the novel, signed in any way you wish (or left unsigned, I’m easy)

A beaded reticule, for that nineteenth-century touch

A pendant key-shaped watch, in the hope that you find a lock to fit it into

A special super secret prize or two

How do you win?

I know that some people have huge problems commenting on this blog, so I’m going to take advantage of the fact that Facebook now allows me to run a contest through a simple post on my Facebook page. Yay! Here’s the link. And here are the rules:

1. The contest will run from today (August 11, 2014) to 9 a.m. CDT next Monday (August 18, 2014). All entries received after 9 a.m. CDT on 8/18/14 will be disregarded.
2. You must be 13 or older to enter. The House of Closed Doors would probably rate about a PG-13, but standards vary so check the reviews if you’re unsure about its suitability.
3. To enter, you must Like and comment on the post. Your comment should answer the question: What is your favorite kind of book? and be in the form of a complete sentence.
4. The reason why I require a comment is to weed out obvious spammers. If you include a link to anything in your comment or anything about your comment looks fishy, it’s going to get deleted. It’s my Facebook page and I reserve the right to delete comments, plus I really want the prize to be won by someone who actually reads books.
5. The contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed, approved or administered by, or associated with, Facebook, and you can’t hold Facebook responsible for anything connected with the contest. I have to say that under Facebook’s rules.
6. You’re going to have to supply me with a residential address if you win the contest—no post boxes or business addresses. I won’t share your address in any way.
7. I will tag you in the comments if you win, or you can check back on this page after 8/18/14.
8. The contest is worldwide, but be warned, I’m going to use the cheapest shipping method possible.
9. Under Facebook’s rules I’m not allowed to require you to Share the post to win, but you’re free to Share it with book-loving friends.
10. I’ll pick the winner via a random number generator.
11. I won’t be sharing or using names or any kind of data that comes my way as a result of this contest, except to count how many people join in. I’m holding this contest for fun and in celebration of making it into print at last, although I’ll admit there’s always a “soft marketing” aspect to things like this.

So there you have it. I hope the contest works OK—first time I’ve tried doing a contest via Facebook! And I’d love to hear from any of you who decide to buy the paperback about the purchasing experience, especially if you’ve tried to purchase via a bookstore. I try my best to make the book as widely available as possible in as many forms as possible, at the most consistent pricing possible, but this is turning out to be an unpredictable journey. A couple of friends on Goodreads have said they’ve asked their local libraries to purchase a copy—this is definitely a win for me, as it still represents a book purchase AND possibly gets my name and writing in front of a few more people.

One more thing—not only does Blogger (or Google) make it hard to post comments on this blog, it doesn’t tell me when comments are posted. It’s beyond me how I can fix this. You’re probably better off visiting my Facebook page or even my personal Facebook profile (which is public) if you want to engage with me over anything I say in this blog. I’m a chatty person, as you probably noticed, and I love having intelligent discussions, so if I don’t reply it’s simply because I haven’t seen you. Alas, Google.